Man is a unified whole of mind-body. In search for the parts that make up the whole.

"The whole is more than the sum of its parts"

The above mentioned quote has been around since the time of Aristotle and is used to explain emergence, as these quotes, suggest, attributed to the pioneer psychologist G. H. Lewes,:

"Every resultant is either a sum or a difference of the co-operant forces; their sum, when their directions are the same -- their difference, when their directions are contrary. Further, every resultant is clearly traceable in its components, because these are homogeneous and commensurable. It is otherwise with emergents, when, instead of adding measurable motion to measurable motion, or things of one kind to other individuals of their kind, there is a co-operation of things of unlike kinds. The emergent is unlike its components insofar as these are incommensurable, and it cannot be reduced to their sum or their difference." (Lewes 1875, p. 412)(Blitz 1992)"

Emergence was further defined as:

"the arising of novel and coherent structures, patterns and properties during the process of self-organization in complex systems."(Corning 2002)

and elaborated, to describe the qualities of emergence by this definition in more detail:

"The common characteristics are: (1) radical novelty (features not previously observed in systems); (2) coherence or correlation (meaning integrated wholes that maintain themselves over some period of time); (3) A global or macro "level" (i.e. there is some property of "wholeness"); (4) it is the product of a dynamical process (it evolves); and (5) it is "ostensive" - it can be perceived. For good measure, Goldstein throws in supervenience -- downward causation." (Corning 2002)"

The ideas mentioned can be used to think further in matters concerned with the ongoing monism vs dualism dispute. The connection of mind and body as it is evident by the following quote:

"Corliss Lamont rightly contends that the fundamental issue is the relationship of personality to body, and divides the various positions into two broad categories: monism, which asserts that body and personality are bound together and cannot exist apart; and dualism, which asserts that body and personality are separable entities which may exist apart. Lamont is convinced that the facts of modern science weigh heavily in favor of monism, and offers the following as scientific evidence that the mind depends upon the body:

- in the evolutionary process the versatility of living forms increases with the development and complexity of their nervous systems
- the mind matures and ages with the growth and decay of the body
- alcohol, caffeine, and other drugs can affect the mind
- destruction of brain tissue by disease, or by a severe blow to the head, can impair normal mental activity; the functions of seeing, hearing and speech are correlated with specific areas of the brain.
- thinking and memory depend upon the cortex of the brain, and so ‘it is difficult beyond measure to understand how they could survive after the dissolution, decay or destruction of the living brain in which they had their original locus.’ (page 76)

These considerations lead Lamont to the conclusion that the connection between mind and body “is so exceedingly intimate that it becomes inconceivable how one could function without the other … man is a unified whole of mind-body or personality-body so closely and completely integrated that dividing him up into two separate and more or less independent parts becomes impermissible and unintelligible.”[1]"

The idea of the individual as being a unified whole of mind-body or personality-body has to looked at, from the perspective of 'the whole is more than the sum of its parts' concept, as both modes of inquiry, reductionist and holistic, in collaboration will provide answers to the ongoing problem.

Though science has built up a case of hard facts to defend its stance than the dualist side, however is short-sighted and downright ignorant to dismiss whatever has been with us, in individual and collective level, since the dawn of humanity and continues to be with us all along. Certainly what is for science to examine is not tangible and hard to configure but there is bound to be something to work on.

Ways of approach can be provided by following the perspective of strong emergence, as someone can surmise by reading the following quotes:

"Mark A. Bedau observes:

"Although strong emergence is logically possible, it is uncomfortably like magic. How does an irreducible but supervenient downward causal power arise, since by definition it cannot be due to the aggregation of the micro-level potentialities? Such causal powers would be quite unlike anything within our scientific ken. This not only indicates how they will discomfort reasonable forms of materialism. Their mysteriousness will only heighten the traditional worry that emergence entails illegitimately getting something from nothing."(Bedau 1997)

However,

"the debate about whether or not the whole can be predicted from the properties of the parts misses the point. Wholes produce unique combined effects, but many of these effects may be co-determined by the context and the interactions between the whole and its environment(s)." (Corning 2002)"

Along that same thought, Arthur Koestler stated,

"it is the synergistic effects produced by wholes that are the very cause of the evolution of complexity in nature" and used the metaphor of Janus to illustrate how the two perspectives (strong or holistic vs. weak or reductionistic) should be treated as perspectives, not exclusives, and should work together to address the issues of emergence.(Koestler 1969)"

Further,

"The ability to reduce everything to simple fundamental laws does not imply the ability to start from those laws and reconstruct the universe..The constructionist hypothesis breaks down when confronted with the twin difficulties of scale and complexity. At each level of complexity entirely new properties appear. Psychology is not applied biology, nor is biology applied chemistry. We can now see that the whole becomes not merely more, but very different from the sum of its parts."(Anderson 1972)"

Consciousness, a force?

Consciousness manifests something that is going on. Something that stirs up and creates states, world states. A force that materialises by attentive brain function. Brain function an operation that involve processes. Processes are dynamic, they continuously develop and evolve. They are driven as physical quantities constantly take up new values. Varying within ranges, they are variables and as they drive processes along are considered as forces.

Mental processes are dynamic driven by physical quantities acting on brain mechanisms identified by neuroscientists, but not only. Is consciousness, the outcome of mental processes, a force, at par with the other fundamental forces in nature, or derived by a fundamental force or a pseudo-force, a fictitious force?

It is well documented in quantum physics that:

"While the spin of an electron is always up or down when you measure it, it does more adventurous things when you don't."

Measurement an application of our observing powers, a mental activity, a thinking process, the projection of our thoughts, our consciousness to the external world.

Are these not the traces of force? Does this not implicate consciousness? Consciousness can therefore be regarded as a force. Taking that stance we might be able to explain a lot of related and unrelated problems seeking solutions. And not only the fundamentals of reality, the quantum and classical worlds, but even problems that each individual faces in its everyday life course and even exotic problems which stand detached from the concept of reality we know and accept. Find it acceptable.

'Holistic' programming? Is it a base to make sense how our brain and mind work?

"Is the brain 'massively parallel'? Is the brain a computer? Is the self an illusion? Some ideas have an appeal that gets them widely adopted in spite of their inherent unlikeliness."

Triggered by 'surely not?' website.

The brain is a processor. It processes events in the world. Processor or processors irrelevant at the moment as well as parallel, massively parallel or serial.
Quoting from the contents of the website:

"Each processor typically has its own memory and operating system; where the activities of the different processors overlap, the relationship is carefully managed so that they do not have to remain in step, and this requires careful prior programming."

Can we , in any way possible, talk about programming in the brain? Right now, a 'programming' I could think of, is the 'holistic'; some sort of programming based on the holistic approach.

"This does not seem to me even remotely like the way the brain is organised, so far as we understand it. There do not seem to be any good candidates within the brain for the role of processor (neurons are surely too simple) ..."

It is simplistic as an argument as well, in the attempt to build a case against the thought to treat the brain as a computer. The feeling of abhorrence in entertaining such a vile thought takes over, muddles up thinking and deters a more sober approach to the whole issue.

With regards to the neurons and their function in the brain, we should take into account their organisation as reverberated cell assemblies mentioned by John Holland. At the moment there is no need to elaborate of what the processor might be. It suffices to say that components of a brain processor might be the reverberated cell assemblies or groups of them.

Our brain sees the whole, our mind makes a whole while using our 'in-control' consciousness. We always assume that we see the whole picture since both our brain and our mind follow the same 'holistic' programming albeit our 'in-control' consciousness is not as efficient as our brain as it does not have direct access to the brain mechanisms, its access is only indirect via our 'out-of-control' consciousness, and its efforts to emulate brain operations are clumsy. Treats disparate parts as a whole, oblivious to the fact that there are either parts still missing, or parts falsely attributed to the whole, and in the process is making a fool of its carrier.

How can we fathom the holistic premise? Are there any maths which attempt to explain how 'the whole is more than the sum of its parts'? Any such maths might provide the base for elucidating the rules of how 'holistic' programming works. A start would be, by looking at John Holland's mechanisms in agent based systems. How simple rules by being endlessly repeated create enormous complexity. The constrained generating procedures a result of simple mechanisms.

In my mind the holistic premise is what makes the difference and it works in ways I can not explain. But I do abide to the idea that my brain knows better than me, and I follow its cues. It is why I made a copy of this web page to have at hand as what it contains it fitted a (or the) whole. It is part of. It did not happen by chance, it happened because it fitted a whole.

What 'whole' or to what effect still to be decided.

Blindsight because our neurons chart an individual's surrounding space.

Blindsight and its connection with the in-built neural function and the space being charted by our neurons. Eric Harth "The creative loop" page 137

"The experiments with D.B. were continued over a number of years and always yielded the same results: The light pattern projected into the patient's blind field caused no awareness on his part, and yet information was clearly received by the brain."

"But the remarkable fact is that this information, although usable, is not accompanied by any feeling of awareness. There evidently is, as L. Weiskrantz puts it, a 'straightforward and unambiguous route ....

Neurons have built-in solving power, churning out solutions fast. Better keep consciousness away.

It is down to the structions he (ref. Julian Jaynes) posits, that direct the neurons to perform an operation, or the .. that the .determining tendency.. mentioned by Julian Jaynes for ... what I see as a preparation and executive stage (ref. 'thinking's alternate phases'). As about the perfection of the operation is mentioned by .greek name.. attributed to Edelman. In Nature 1998 magazine the decision making is hinted in the unconscious whereas in the same issue there is the reference to zombie and what the brain sees and the mind do not see. Again in the paper by (ref. .....) about savant consciousness and the ability of the brain his studies revealed.

May be consciousness play the role of the conductor of a symphony orchestra. It leads and directs an orchestra but is neither the composer nor the musician. It gives directions and cues to the musicians when to perform but neither writes the play nor play the musical instruments.

Peter ... gives an account of the way consciousness plays tricks even in tasks which are very demanding and supposedly are rational. But our rationality doesn't lay there. Our rationality, or I would say the rationality of the mind lies in the function of the neurons themselves. It is the circuits we so admire in the architecture of the computers. All the boolean algebra that computer chips do so efficiently. Because what is rationality? Simple one plus one makes two, but in repeated almost endless loops, something our neurons do a lot more efficiently.(are a lot more efficient in doing so).

There are plenty of hints which display the real role of the unconscious part of our brain but always have been downplayed. I first came across the first one in Erich Harth's book, "The creative loop". In a paragraph he mentioned about the natives in Hawaii when they first saw the ship of Captain Cook. They totally missed it, they did not even see it, their consciousness did not have a concept of a ship and therefore did not take into consideration the stimuli their brain was sending. Such an overriding effect that consciousness produced is startling but it can be explained by the way the brain works and what consciousness records. At the same time puts consciousness function in its proper perspective.

Its what Julian Jaynes mentioned about the scientists' places of making their discoveries. The three bbb's bed bus bath.

"Consciousness studies a problem and prepares it as a struction, a process which may result in a sudden appearance of the solution as if out of nowhere. During World War II, British physicists used to say that they no longer made their discoveries in the laboratory; they had their three B’s where their discoveries were made—the bath, the bed, and the bus."

I do not know what to call it. Unconscious has been tarnished and does not give the perspective I envision for the whole process. Maybe be it is better just to use a term, something irreducible, solid and straightforward. Something that actually exists and its presence cannot be denied.

The .. is using the immense power of neurons abandon consciousness in its composer role, rely on our neurons, let the structions do their work and should be content and should not be apprehensive of putting our consciousness at the back seat, what it matters is get the job done, and with our consciousness as a spectator sit back relax and and enjoy the trip.


Illusions can directly be attributed to the concepts the collective human mind has accumulated in his efforts to understand reality. These concepts continue to be in force and muddle up the human mind's efforts to elucidate further reality. (my refeenc) and arragher;s reference.


The illusion exists and is propagated in the mental constructs human individuals create in their attempts to understand nature's workings and in what is called philosophy. The myriads of concepts which they do not have a foothold in reality. Of course humans efforts to understand reality have employed imagination. And the use of their imagination had to follow some rules in order to be able to expand beyond a limited area, be consistent as what has been contemplated in the past had to be the starting point on what to be contemplated in the future. Need a continuity. But the final goal was the process which required elucidation and in that process the concepts needed elucidation were finite and specific. That means a lot of the concepts invented had to be abandoned, their use being temporary, a transitional stage. Once the concepts of the original process have been elucidated (achieved) the redundant concepts need to be abandoned, have to be abandoned. Their use obsolete. This can be seen in the words, in every day life are going out of fashion, they become forgotten and discarded. The same goes with models, redundant concepts have built, and which have been employed to explain natural phenomena. It is what is known as paradigm shifts 9Scardos reference) and he book of ... gives a thorough account of ways of thought that have been abandoned, even concepts which were widely accepted and concepts that stirred the hearts and directed the lives of many people (reference mine)

So therefore the zombie is not the unconscious part of our consciousness. It is our consciousness itself. I do not know what possessed the first person that coined the term zombie for such an obviously higher function of the brain, but certainly it was other than admiration or even reverence to such an exquisite operation. Probably the result of consciousness within himself which could not bear the thought it was demoted to a lesser role than it was supposed to be playing.

Brain and consciousness holistic approach.

The brain sees the whole and that is how it acts upon the objects in the world, as wholes, holistically.

The brain makes up the whole from the parts. The holistic approach and action of the brain toward the environment is a mode of function that is passed to our consciousness as well. We approach everything presented to our consciousness in a holistic manner, not as individual separate objects. More precisely the part of a whole that has drawn our attention, the stimulus from the surroundings our attention is focused upon, drags along every other part that makes up the whole.

That is how the gestalt process works, where even if a small part of a pattern is presented to us is sufficient to bring along to our consciousness the whole pattern. Our consciousness or brain is making up the whole from any of its individual parts.

Our consciousness acts in a holistic manner with concepts too. It includes within it the anticipation John Holland attributes to his reverberating cell assemblies and as such it directs our actions that about to happen in the future. Concepts connected by threads woven into a whole submerge in our consciousness, that represent our edge of consciousness at that particular moment, as it shifts in time, constantly re-arranging its contents. An uncanny action which if it is left undisturbed it will surprise us.

If however attempt to interfere, applying doctrines alien to human nature, adhering to the distorted simplified models prevalent in society we loose that spontaneity that our holistic consciousness amply give us. The holistic nature of consciousness becomes a drawback, as it treats the part as a whole, ignoring everything else. It directs our attention into a single thing, lead us in a state of ignorance and in one-dimensional overriding approach to life events.

Consciousness treats reality holistically, as reality acts as an infinite connected whole to our senses. Mach's principle at work.

Connections?

synchrony like resonance,

helps the signal emanating from the oscillators fall into step vibrating in a lock-step fashion as in a plasma of atoms?

Charged particles must be close enough together such that each particle influences many nearby charged particles, rather than just interacting with the closest particle (these collective effects are a distinguishing feature of a plasma). The plasma approximation is valid when the number of electrons within the sphere of influence (called the Debye sphere whose radius is the Debye (screening) length) of a particular particle is large. The average number of particles in the Debye sphere is given by the plasma parameter, Λ.

Each particle influences many nearby charged particles. Cellular automata? Sphere of influence, and within that sphere of influence the necessity for a large number of particles. Charged meaning that they must be excited, being ready for exerting other particles and by being exerted by other particles.

Particles as entities, and entities existing in many forms. Entities as concepts, ideas, processes. Oscillating, excited. Ever ready to participate in processes, to influence and be influenced by other entities nearby. Within the sphere of influence. and whenever there is a large number of entities, then they get into step, become synchronised, a resonance field, a plasma? The synchronized entities can easily assimilate newcomer entities and their power nonlinear, geared.

Entities as concepts. Thoughts thought from men organised in a similar manner, the plasma mode. Primeval forces, the powerhouses of cosmos whose remnants are seen in the huge gas clouds the nursery of stars, the stars themselves, the core of earth. And what we see in the universe a result of harnessing that awesome power? The result of the myriad similar processes undergoing in the very same plasma, generating the forms our senses detect. The phenomenally stable objects our experience witnesses. But inside they are other than stable. Stability is phenomenal. An illusion?

And the objects we observe, out of the plasmas of entities, so delicately balanced around minute determining initial conditions, chaotic developments, the starting points, which if upset will violently re-arrange the whole plasma, the object so dearly ingrained in our minds. Our minds in step with the object, intertwined and spawned by the same processes that gave rise to the objects.

and what about the grand-father clocks against the wall, their knocking vibrating in step, synchronisation

Topics include: atomic and molecular dynamics in strong fields, high harmonic generation, coherent X-ray radiation, nonlinear plasma dynamics and relativistic optics, laser-based electron and ion acceleration, inertial confinement fusion and fast ignition, laboratory astrophysics, high energy astrophysics and cosmology, as well as applications of superstrong pulses to high energy physics.

harmonic generation and synchrony, and resonance, nonlinear plasma dynamics and relativistic optics?

Results are presented for a theoretical model, known as the ion model (IM), recently elaborated to calculate the radiative opacity of a hot dense plasma. The density functional theory is used to obtain the general set of self-consistent field equations that describe the state of the whole ensemble of plasma atoms and ions. Theoretical features of the Hartree–Fock–Slater model, the detail configuration account, and the IM are considered. The IM is used for optimal selections of compound chemical compositions for laser and heavy ion target designs.

radiative as radiating? Self-consistent field equations that describe the state of the whole ensemble of plasma atoms and ions? Atoms in a plasma vibrating in a lock-step fashion? Oscilatting in lock-step?